Greeting from the Congo
This blog entry is from a feasibility study to start animal production in the north of Congo and the Bateke area to reduce the hunting and consumption of wildlife in these areas. This is not the whole report, just some excerpts.
Animal protein production to reduce the use of bushmeat in the Plateaux and Ouesso area
Introduction
Bushmeat (antelopes, gazelles, crocodiles, monkeys, Sibiti, porcupines and sometimes other protected species ) is consumed widely in the Republic of Congo. The prices for bushmeat are similar or higher than frozen chicken or fish at the market or Bouchieres. The availability of bushmeat is harder to find the Plateaux area and very easy to find in the Ouesso area. Another important issue is much of the bushmeat hunted in the Ouesso area is shipped south to Brazzaville for sale. Almost all of the meat available in bouchieres is frozen imported meat. Most butcher shops do not kill live animals but just resell frozen meat bought in Brazzaville or sometimes Cameroon. Poultry (Chicken whole, legs and thighs, and wings along with turkey wings) is the most common meat sold and it almost all imported from Brazil and Czechoslovakia (though this is often labels as origin from France) Fish is the second most sold meat and mostly comes from Pointe Noire is frozen form. There is also a lot of dried and smoked fish sold in the market from various local and imported sources. The exception is beef that is butchered from cattle walked down from CAR. Beef is relatively hard to find in the Plateaux are. Local production of meat animals is very low. Some small production projects have been started and most have failed after the initial donated feed was used up and local sources of complete feed were unavailable or too expensive. Some of the projects continues feeding locally available feed (Raw manioc, With the increasing production of corn and soybeans on the mechanized farm program of the Ministry of Agriculture and IPHD animal feed could be produce high quality feed and prices that both units could realize profits necessary for both parties to be sustainable. Although a lot of people like varying their diet with some bushmeat, price seams to be the deciding factor on what kind of meat to purchase. This seams to be true for both the consumers and the bouchieres. In the Plateaux area availability seams to be the limiting factor in bushmeat sales. In the Ouesso area where bush meat is readily available and the price is similar to domestic meat bush meat consumption is higher than other forms as noted in a PROGEP-PNOK report.
Local restaurant in Djambala advertising fresh monkey, porcupine, fresh antelope.
Crocodile and gazelle at the Ouesso market
Crocodile and Antelope meat for sale in the market and yes that is a monkey for sale as well.
Products and Market Analysis
Poultry
Chicken is the most consumed domestic meat. It is sold almost all from imported sources in frozen form. Since electricity can be erratic in the areas of this study the cold chain can have major gaps. Potable generators are used extensively to maintain the meat, but thawing does occur and many freezers at bouchieres smelled like bad meat and consumers are aware of this problem and concerned about the disease potential. Prices vary going up as you get away from a distribution hub. Prices vary from 1500 CFA to 3000 Cfa per KG (about $1.36 to $2.72 per lb) for chicken legs and thighs. Whole chickens are around 2000 CFa to 2800 CFA per kg ($1.81 to $ 2.54/lb) which is usually one whole bird as they ship really small butchered chickens here.
Butcher shop advertising the various cuts and prices. Pretty much every shop offers the same thing.
Butcher shops in this part of Africa are different than what we think of in the US. They are not killing or dressing animals, just a freezer and a machete to hack up frozen pieces of meat that were bought elsewhere.
In the bigger towns the is a large cold room (which can be just a 20 ft refrigerated contain) that sells meat directly to consumers or to other smaller bouchieres. Otherwise the butcher shops go directly to Brazzaville for their meat or refrigerated trucks arrive and somewhat regular intervals to sell these shops their meat. Even though the meat is imported prices are affordable for the local population. This is because the meat is coming from large modern production units and also the products sold in Congo are the less desirable cuts and products for their area. Very small whole chickens ( 1 to 1.4 kg per bird), chicken leg sections and wings and you only see the turkey wings not any other pert. Its actually kind of hard to buy a chicken breast in Congo which is preferred in the richer markets. Volumes can be high for the sale of poultry products.
Eggs are also sold throughout the areas sold. They are bought in Brazzaville in the case of the |Plateaux area and Cameroon in the case of the Ouesso area and sold in small shops. The price seams pretty consistent throughout the area studied at 150 CFA per egg or 4500 to 5000 CFA for a flat of 30 eggs. Volume sold seams quite low.
Raising broiler chickens locally could reduce the price of meat and shift some pressure from the local wildlife. Complete and affordable feed is the key to these projects to succeed. In the plateaux area this is easier as the open grassland with good soils are easier to convert to farms to produce corn and soya to produce feed. Working in cooperation with he farms could be the key if we add local processing of the corn and soy to produce feed locally. Presently I am getting info on soy and corn processing equipment for this transformation. Chickens are not sold live often in the study area. A butchering operation will probably have to be set up along with the broiler production.
Fish
Fish is sold the next most common domestic meat. Fish is sold in various forms from frozen, fresh, dried and smoked. In the Plateaux area fish is mainly available in dried, smoked and frozen forms. Prices for smoked and dried forms are higher than other meat forms. The advantage of these forms is they can be stored for a month. Local butchers have more problems keeping their frozen fish good under the poor cold chain conditions of Congo. Estimating the volumes sold is much more difficult in the local fish market as fish is sold by kilogram only at the bouchieres in frozen form. The fresh, smoked and dried forms are sold by the small pile or piece. Fresh fish is much more available near big rivers like up in the Ouesso area. In the last two years bush meat consumption has gone up because the availability of fresh fish has gone down since a logging road has been closed that connected the towns to a fish rich river nearby.
Fresh fish caught in nearby rivers in Ouesso
Frozen fish mostly from the Ocean at a butcher shop
Smoked fish is available everywhere in the Congo and is good as it doesn't need refrigeration, but can be somewhat pricey.
There are some projects in the country where small fish ponds have been built and Tilapia are being raised. The usual problem is that affordable feed is not available and the fish are not feed enough supplemental feed so their production is low. Sales from these ponds is all to local people in the area and requires a special place to make the ponds. The advantage of fish production is the market potential is present and there is little preparation needed before selling the fish. It can be sold fresh or just put in the freezer for storage and sale later. Tilapia and maybe carp are the best choices as they can withstand poor treatment, low oxygen levels in the water, have few disease problems and eat almost everything though are primarily herbivores. They gain weight fast if given high protein feed. Again ample complete feed is the key in animal production. Diseases are minimal for Nile Tilapia. Pest problems include snakes which keeping the area around the ponds weeds clean will help reduce the problem. Frogs can also be a problem which must be reduced or ducks brought in to eat the tadpoles.
Pork products
Pork is not commonly sold in Bouchieres. This is partially because some Bouchieres are owned by Muslim owners who prefer not to sell pork and also the inavailablilty of frozen pork products. As I mentioned before more butchers here do not kill and dress their own meat and just resell frozen prepared products. Pork is the only animal sometimes killed and prepared locally from locally produced animals and sold in small amounts (500 or 1000 CFA bundles). This happens in both small villages and the towns. Djambala seams to have the most consistent supply of butchers pork. Pigs are raised in small amounts widely in the villages. The pigs raised in the villages are mostly allowed to roam free and feed some supplemental raw manioc and corn. Villagers by salt mineral blocks for their animals and once a year in some areas a technician comes by vaccinating the animals for a fee. There were some confined pig projects visited in this study. Most had failed from lack of feed. The most common project is the pig sty was donated along with the starter animals and on ton of feed. The pigs did very well on the feed provided. When this ran out sometimes additional feed was purchased for a short time but most often the pigs were fed raw manioc, other leaves(manioc, papaya and sweet potato), avocados and corn. Raw manioc can be a good supplement to other feeds but best not more than 20% of the feed ration. The pigs start to decline with this poor feed and start to lose weight, get sick and mother can start to eat their young. Then the pigs are let out to forage on their own again in confined areas and start dying as either they get sick or in their hunger eat things they should not be eating. Only tow pig operations we saw did the animal look really good and in both cases these operations were subsidized.
A good but subsidized pig operation vs a local unsubsidized pig operation where the animals are underfed
Beef
In the Ouesso area beef is an important meat source from animal walked down from Sudan or Central African Republic and butchered locally. Some of these butchers are subsidized by the lumbar companies to satisfy their food security portion of their certification process to sell their lumbar in the European market. In the towns of Ouesso, Ngombe and Pokola beef volumes were about 2 to 3 animals a week butchers and sold. There is some frozen beef sold as well in the bouchieres imported from India, but it seams a small part of the market. In the Plateaux area the is much less beef available, its market share small and prices around 3000 - 4000 CFA/kg.
Goats and Sheep.
Although goats and to a lessor amount sheep are widely raise in the villages in the study area they are mostly sold and shipped to other areas (mostly Brazzaville) for consumption by the muslin community. Goat and sheep production is higher in the Plateaux area compared to the Ouesso area probably due to the better feed availability in the Plateaux area. There is some people trying to produce sheep in confined production units, but they are confined to too small a pasture area of poor quality pasture that is soon dominated by weeds the animals do not like to consume and insufficient amount of feed is provided. We saw no advantage of confined these animals as a lot of feed is available in the area, especially in the Plateaux area.
The report goes on to explain in detail setting up a broiler chicken operation, hatchery and layer operation as well as fish production with detailed budgets. It gets pretty technical and is beyond what usually goes in these blogs.
The north part of Congo is highly forested and the source of many big rivers in the area. Here I am on a ferry boat we had to cross on the Sangha river. The current looks calm, but when you swim in these rivers you quickly realize it is strong.
This part of Congo is also one of the stronghold of the Pygmy people. Some still live deep in the forest and some have moved closer to the towns. They also still make these temporary houses in the forest.
